With Gwenno's second album Le Kov due for release 2nd March via Heavenly Recordings, Gwenno has today shared a video for “Tir Ha Mor”, the first single to be released from the LP. Watch the video below...

Of the video Gwenno says: “We drove to St Ives and marvelled at the crashing waves, went up the coast, past Zennor and arrived at Levant Mine to pause for thought and remember those who had given and lost so much to the land. All we could do was appreciate the rugged landscape, as so many had done before us. We drove back to Cardiff and I mulled over the merits of dancing to your own song, and concluded that it's alright to do so sometimes. Cornish Abstract Landscape artist, Peter Lanyon, Marghek an Gwyns (Rider of the Wind, his Cornish Gorsedd bardic name) glided over the land to get a better feel of Cornwall, and Tir Ha Mor (Land and Sea) is inspired by his methods and muse. I filmed what was in front of me, which is nowhere near the same level of commitment, but it is my interpretation of what I saw and felt and that, I hope, is worth something.”

Irish-born, and now Glasgow based singer-songwriter Martha Ffion announces new album entitled 'Sunday Best’ which will be released in early 2018. More details to follow on that.To celebrate the news Martha Ffion has also released a track from the album - the wonderful ‘We Make Do’.Stream here on APPLE or SPOTIFY.

Gwenno has also shared a new LP trailer, which can be viewed HERE, and announced a bunch of live performances in support of the album, beginning in early December in Falmouth and Merthyr Tydfil and running through to April 2018 with a show at London’s Hoxton Hall. Dates/info below:

Working with long-time collaborator, Rhys Edwards, the Welsh musician and singer’s next album, due in Spring 2018, continues her trailblazing mission, picking up exactly where Y Dydd Olaf left off. Written entirely in Cornish, Le Kov translates as “the place of memory”.

The album's title crystallises Gwenno’s relationship to the language—a fluent speaker of Cornish who has seldom ventured south of the River Tamar, let alone lived there. As a child, she imagined that Cornish held similar cultural weight to the Welsh language: a living, spoken tongue that coursed through everyday life. “How wrong I was” she admits.

Yet the Cornish language has experienced a notable revival since the turn of the 20th century. There are now around 1000 fluent speakers, locals were encouraged to claim Cornish identity on the 2011 census, and in 2014 the Cornish people were granted minority status within the UK. It’s huge progress—but Gwenno wasn’t sure how she fit into all this. Could she lay claim to any kind of Cornish identity? What she did know was that as one of the language’s few fluent speakers she felt a duty to make her next album entirely in Cornish: to create a document of a living language, to explore her identity and the endless creative possibilities of a tongue that has a very small surviving artistic output, despite having been around for at least 15 centuries.

The result is an exploration of the individual and collective subconcious and the ‘dream state’, the myths and drolls of Cornwall, and the survival of Britain’s lesser known Brythonic language. More than that, in the age of Brexit, isolationism and hostility towards the rich cultures that make up modern Britain, Le Kov takes on an unexpected wider resonance, and contains bold messages about the importance of respecting and forging links with other cultures—no matter how small.

In that spirit, Gwenno will debut material from Le Kov with two special intimate shows in towns with a rich Brythonic heritage in early December. Dates/info below:

The comedian and writer Sara Pascoe has adapted Pride and Prejudice for a comic stage adaptation. Her play based on Jane Austen's novel is about to open at the Nottingham Playhouse. Brilliant original music from Emmy the Great.

Emmy The Great shares a new single “Mahal Kita”, which is released today on Bella Union. The track is about her time interviewing migrant domestic women women in Hong Kong’s Central District.

Emmy The Great speaks more on the experiences and interviews that inspired “Mahal Kita”: “Since the early 1980’s, domestic workers have congregated in Hong Kong’s public spaces every Sunday, their weekly statutory rest day, and on a further ten public holidays.

Tens of thousands of women sit on cardboard or plastic mats, in the shadow of five-star hotels, major bank buildings, and storefronts with luxury brandnames etched across them in glowing cursive.

They picnic, or cut hair, hold beauty competitions, bridal showers, take part in dance routines. They reclaim public space and transform it into a sanctuary, a place to relax, to share information, to cement networks of support and camaraderie.

There are 380,000 migrant workers in Hong Kong, earning a minimum wage of approx US$550 a month. They are mostly women, many of whom are mothers working to support their families. A 2016 report found ‘serious gaps in Hong Kong’s legal framework in relation to trafficking and forced labour’.

For the many workers who suffer abuse, the Sunday gatherings are an essential route to access help, or to learn about their rights.

This is why it Central is the spiritual home of Hong Kong’s migrant activist community, who have been advocating for migrant women since they first arrived in the city.

Mahal Kita is a record of my time interviewing domestic workers in Hong Kong, where I was born.

I hope this song will be a tribute to every migrant worker who took Hong Kong’s public space and made it their own.”

Emmy The Great's upcoming European tour kicks off in Paris March 20th....tickets and info HERE

“Down the dark, dark stairs, upon the bloody gallows of soft rock, through the oubliette of cheese, into the torture chamber of disco, you are welcomed to the Late Night Pop Dungeon. The Grand High Executionatrix, dungeon mistress Charlotte Church and her ten-piece ultra-metronomic post-punk-disco-R’n’R’n’B backing band will give her MK Ultra treatment to the greatest tunes that time forgot, and some that will forever haunt our collective memory. Bring dancing shoes - the floor is on fire.”

In anticipation of her upcoming tour of England and Wales, Emmy The Great shares brand new track “Rapids”. It’s the first taste of new music from Emma Lee-Moss since her consecutive US tours with Beth Orton and Jens Lekman.

“I realized recently that music has been my longest relationship, and they do say relationships are hard.” Emma says of “Rapids”. “The process of making Second Love was a long process, and it changed me. Everything in my life being clearer now, I see that music has always been at its center, confounding or delighting me depending on its mood. Now that Second Love is finished and out in the world, I am eager to be making things and capitalizing on these new realizations. Rapids is the first result of pulling on this thread.

'I wanted to write something to be released quickly, symbolically for myself, so that I know that the album cycle is over and it's all new from here. The song ended up being about that tustle with music, about a question I am asking myself now- am I going to keep this relationship going or do I let it go? Could I even let it go? It's a love song to music, and so I see it as the right link between Second love and what comes next. Watch this space for more, I guess.”